Stepping Up

Up Through: Episode 5.7 "Took"
A great episode overall. I once sat in a courtroom with Billy Murphy - it was back in 2005 and he was wearing a bluetooth earpiece in court. It was strange enough at the time that the judge stopped him mid-sentence to ask what that thing was on his ear. A real pleasure to see a B-more lawyer make one of the best cameos in the whole show.
Clay Davis' trial, while getting low marks for legal realism, gets my highest praise for entertainment. "Promathus" and "Asilius" - classic.

I thought the ending scene with Kima and her son was beautiful, though it was a centimeter from falling into maudlin sentimalism. Also it was the first crane shot ever used in the show if I'm not mistaken. On that same note, I've noticed handheld cameras sprinkled throughout this season, where I believe they were absent in Seasons 1-4. In general, I like handhelds, but I always gave points to The Wire for steering clear of this look-at-the-edgy-look-of-my-edgy-story convention.

The gearing-up scene was shot with handheld cameras, with journos and cops assigned their posts in the quixotic homeless killer search. Fake killer aside, this scene highlighted the unique power of institutions to handle such moments of mass mobilization and coordinated effort. David Simon loves to hate on institutions, but it's hard to imagine that any group of individual agents could operate with the same level of speed, clear delegation and coordination. So maybe Simon is right about the corrosive and counterproductive role of institutions generally, but perhaps there's something to the notion that they're worth keeping around for moments of crisis. Without a chain of command, how would Simon (and libertarians and anarchosyndicalists for that matter) propose communal threats be handled?
I don't think this defeats The Wire's central institutional critique - it just paints a somewhat rosier picture of unique institutional efficacy.

One last thought:
When Marlo killed Prop Joe, he wore a black T-shirt with "Royal Addiction" printed on it.
In "Took," Michael wears a white T-shirt featuring a graphic number 1 wearing a crown and the word "Royal" written on it.
Hmmmmm......